Open-Secrets

Month: July 2009

  • The Gap is the Key to Learning

    no mind disjunctureChange & Transformation Happen in the Gap

    One session of a 10-day training I once attended was focused on the “gap.” The teacher of this session, Alia, informed us that all change and transformation occur in the gap and not as a result of reading, studying, meditating, chanting or anything else.

    The gap is an elusive rascal. When you search for it directly it is difficult to find. The gap is not so much a space between not-knowing and knowing as it is a “not-space.” This not-space is a particular openness in the mind and soul that allows us to be directly informed by consciousness – the medium of knowing underlying all manifestation.

    Alia worked with us in subtle ways to help us nurture a sense of the gap, so we might observe our relationship with it. Today, you can find the gap being referred to as disjuncture.

    The optimal zone in which adults learn is referred to as disjuncture – when time seems to stop… when our biographical repertoire is no longer sufficient to cope automatically with our situation… where we have a tension with our environment (Adult Learning in the Social Context – Peter Jarvis) Without entering this zone, we are simply stacking up our experience on top of things to which we can relate. This action often leads to an unnecessary compromise, where we settle for what is readily available to us, rather than what is actually the best fit. With disjuncture, we are forced to build a completely new structure of learning. While in the disjuncture zone, though we usually will experience discomfort, we are ultimately able to establish a strong foundation for real learning.

    In the gap, or the disjuncture zone, time stops because we are free from the linear mind and residing more in our nature that underlies the normal mind. In this “space,” our association with the past changes radically – our identity is freed from history – our knowing is not by association but through direct perception.

    Exploring the gap can be challenging as it requires us to be very comfortable with the unknown, not knowing and a willingness and capacity to let go of who and what we know ourselves to be.

    The question here is ultimately – Who or what knows?

    Items of Interest

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  • Discovering Food Again

    food_dietingEveryday is an Adventure with Food & Eating

    I am having a very interesting experience with food and eating. I am not dieting or trying to lose weight – which is what I thought I would be doing about now. Instead, I am discovering what my relationship with food and eating is.

    There is a sense of strangeness, a curiosity to this. I’ve eaten a lot of food in my life – more than my fair share! But here I am not knowing much about my relationship to it – what I like, what my preferences are, when I should eat, what I should eat.

    I feel like an explorer. Every day and every meal is a discovery. I eat at Lettuce in Walnut Creek, CA almost everyday. Most times I get the Cobb Salad without bacon. It’s a wonderful blend of flavors. I enjoy it. Sometimes I wonder if I should be tired or it or bored with it. What I discover is that I don’t know. My past experiences with that salad don’t seem to be around. I look at the menu with the ingredients and think – that sounds good – and it is!

    The other day, I was thinking I should have something different to eat. I did not know what I wanted. I was thinking of this and that – pulling food out of my memory banks, but nothing seemed real or enticing. I was getting hungrier, but still had some things to do before I would have time to eat.

    The hunger was interesting. It wasn’t demanding, but it was there. I was observing it like a dog with it’s head cocked and one ear raised – a real organic sense of curiosity. I could not come up with an answer about what to eat. In the end, food found me as I stopped by some friends’ home to pick something up and they were just heating up the leftovers they had taken home the other day from a dinner I had served them – my world famous veggie fajitas!

    There was plenty enough for three and boy did I love and relish the blend of flavors in those fajitas.

    The other day, I had some terrible Mexican food. What was curious was the sense of this being a stand alone experience not tied to the past or to the future. Very interesting to have that food in my mouth. No taste buds popping, no mouth-watering yummies. Just bland, dead substances.

    In all these experiences, it’s not so much the food, but the sense of newness about my knowledge of food and my relationship to it. I know, but don’t know.

    It is a most curious feeling of not knowing who I am at times.

    Items of Interest

    Links of Interest

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